FUNDS: Blackrock - UK Fund Repeating Performance Is Not Easy

1947: Repeat Performance - Werker

Financial Planners are often caught up attempting to select the best Fund Managers and funds, anyone that knows much about me will appreciate that this is a game that I'm reluctant to play, information about my approach can be found within the resources section of the main website. In essence as a financial planner I believe that my primary task is to help clients achieve their goals, not to beat the market. Those that simply attempt to beat the market are bound to deliver disappointing results as no one has consistently been able to do this over the long term (at least no one I know of).

Today a very well known and highly respected Fund Manager from a good Fund Management Group (Blackrock) announced that he would be stepping down from his role as lead manager on the Blackrock UK Fund. Mark Lyttleton has run the fund since September 2001 and will hand over to Nick Little. Mark will continue to run the rather more successful Absolute Alpha Fund and the Dynamic Fund. His performance with the UK Fund has not been anything like as spectacular (well we can't all be good at everthing) but when it comes to investment returns, this means that by most measures the UK Fund underperformed its peers and indeed its benchmark of the FTSE AllShare, though admittedly this does depend on which set of data is considered. This move does tend to add some weight to my assertion that consistently outperforming the market is very difficult indeed, something that this AA rated Fund Manager has not achieved with this fund, and remember Mark Lyttleton is one of the better Fund Managers.